Of all the nice things said about Justin Schultz in the past twelve months, one of the most persistent refers to what a fine shooter of the puck he is. Entire videos were devoted to Schultz’s exploits with University of Wisconsin Badgers. After he signed with the Edmonton Oilers, he proceeded to light up the American Hockey League, which he still co-leads in rookie scoring. He’s finally been tied by forward Tyler Toffoli who has the advantages of a) being a forward and b) still being in the AHL. It has taken Toffoli 55 games to reach the same 48 points that Schultz achieved in a mere 34. Among those were 18 goals, as Schultz repeatedly proved to have both a great wrist shot and an uncanny ability to get open in real good spots to let fly.

Right from the get-go Schultz loved to fire the puck. In eleven of his 34 games in OKC he fired at least four shots on goal, registering 93 shots in all, about 2¾ per game. Here’s a graphic, game-by-game look:

Lots of jitter in the individual data points, but plenty of peaks and valleys right across the spectrum, so fairly consistent. The trend line shows Schultz’s shots tapering off slightly, but not alarmingly so. In his first 13 games he fired 39 shots, and slipped marginally to 34 over the next 13.

Fast forward to the NHL. Schultz now has played 26 games as an Oiler, posting nice offensive numbers of 5-10-15 to comfortably lead Edmonton defencemen in all three categories. But his offence has fallen off in recent times, with just one goal in his last 15 games. This drop-off is in lock step with his shots rate:

Here the trend line is much steeper than the mild slope in OKC, and way more disturbing. Looking again at 13-game splits, Schultz had 34 shots in his first such group, but has fallen all the way off to 17 shots in the next segment. After leading the Oilers defence corps in shots for 10 consecutive games (red diamonds, pink if tied for first), Schultz has done so just 3 times in the 15 games that followed, and been the clear leader on a single occasion. He scored just one goal in that span, in something of an aberration of a game for the entire team, the 5-1 win in Dallas. That night Schultz fired four shots and posted a +2 along with his goal and assist, in what stands out as an exceptional game for the rookie in recent weeks. It’s six games and counting since the last time he recorded as many as 2 shots.

What is causing the drop-off? There’s a whole conspiracy of theories out there:

• the kid is carrying some kind of injury. He missed practice with back pain right around the time his game had just started to fall off. Soon thereafter legions of amateur kinesiologists bubbled up in Oil Country to analyze his posture and skating stride, and speculate about physical reasons for his seeming reluctance to shoot.

• the kid has hit the wall. In his first professional season he has just reached the 60-game mark, this after averaging just 40 per year at Wisconsin. His previous recorded career high was 57 GP in the BCHL back in 2007-08. Moreover, the compressed schedule is making that wall doubly hard to penetrate into “second wind” territory. (Especially on that road trip!) Add in the fact that he’s leading both his team and all NHL rookies in ice time at a solid 22:15 per game, and it makes for a hectic pace.

• the NHL has figured the kid out. Opposing coaches have analyzed his tendencies and are actively defending against them. Fewer of his shots are getting through — in the first segment of games he attempted 68 shots, of which 34 got through to the goalie (or the net!), a 50% rate. In the next segment just 17 of 41 attempted drives did so, barely over 40%.

• as goes the powerplay, so goes Justin Schultz, and the powerplay has been going nowhere for the most part. Chicken and egg thing for sure, but the facts say that Schultz himself scored 4 powerplay goals in the first segment and 0 in the second. By no means a coincidence is the severe reduction of powerplay opportunities the team (and the league) as a whole has been suffering as referees once again pocket their whistles. Oilers had some 103 minutes of powerplay time in the first 13 games, just 62 in the next segment. (The powerplay time-against figures have similarly plummeted from 107 to 68, in case you were wondering.) No doubt that will have its effect on both Schultz’s shots and goals rates, although on the back of my envelope it doesn’t account for the entire slide.

Fortunately, some of the other defencemen are picking up the slack to some degree, though none seemingly has JSchultz’s knack for picking corners. Jeff Petry in particular has ramped up his offensive game, having fired 28 shots in the last 13 games after just 16 in the first segment. He’s led or co-led the squad in shots in 11 of the last 15 games, so he’s bringing it consistently, and the goals and points have finally started to come. Petry has recently crept past Schultz in even strength ice time, but he barely gets a sniff of any sort on the powerplay, just 24 seconds per game compared to the rookie’s 3:40.

As a group Oilers defencemen have actually increased their shot output in the second segment, from 78 to 83 shots, a shade north of 1.0 shots per player-game. So when expressed as a percentage of team shots Schultz’s decline stands out all the more.

Schultz was commonly taking half or more of the d-corps’ shots in the opening weeks, but has dropped to a fraction of that as time has gone on.

One last disturbing trend concerns Schultz’s performance at even strength. Through those eleven games that he was bombing in the shots, many of them on the powerplay, he and Schultz the Elder were keeping their heads above water at evens. By Game 11 Justin stood at +1 on the season, with just a single minus game on his resume. Since then has been a sea of red with just one plus game (the Dallas Anomaly), with his net figure having taken a drastic plunge all the way to -10. One last graphic, this one showing both game-by-game and accumulated totals:

Again we see trend lines pointing in the wrong direction, while that orange trough looks downright alarming. Plus-minus isn’t the be-all and end-all, it’s subject to a lot of circumstantial stuff and jitter in the data, but the end result amounts to outscoring/getting outscored, which is how they continue to keep track of winners and losers in this darn game. The Schultzes have been a whole lot of the latter in recent times. Justin has had a couple of “even” games since the firm was finally dissolved late in the road trip, but it’s far too soon to know if that’s a temporary blip or the beginning of an active turnaround. For sure, he needs one, and sooner would be better.

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